The Centurion's Woman

Chapter 23

        "No!" Ixillius cried out, Brasus and Chlodochar each hooked one of his arms to hold him back. Alex looked over her shoulder before scanning outside the small door in the back wall. Her features softened. For a moment, she was his Alexandria again. Then the creature he'd rescued from the pit returned, and she looked out to scout the routes possible to her. She handed Lothar a knife, winked at the boy, then darted out with him close behind.

        "No," Ixillius said again, his voice as lost as the woman he loved.

        "We need to move. The fighting outside is less, and someone will come to see what happened in here very soon," Chlodochar said.

        Ixillius dropped his head and stopped straining against the two men preventing him from going after her. Brasus and Chlodochar discussed the merits of taking only the horses they needed, taking all the horses they could, scattering the herd, or any combination thereof. Ixillius listened numbly, walking backwards as they pulled him along to the main door into the building.

        "We should only take only the animals we need," Ixillius said, shaking off the numbness and using his raw emotions to fuel a new rage that left a cold knot in his stomach and instantly focused his thoughts. "We'll scatter the rest of the herd to cover our trails."

        Brasus released his arm once he joined the planning again, too familiar with his friend to bother being suspicious. Chlodochar stared hard at him for a moment before letting go, the gaze penetrating to Ixillius's bones.

        "That agrees with my thinking as well," the older man stated. 

        Brasus frowned slightly at both of them. "I don't believe in leaving good horses behind."

        "From here?" Chlodochar snorted out a laugh as he tightened the grip on his sword. "We'll take the best we find and won't even be taking beasts fit to feed to our dogs."

        They bolted out of the building together and ran through the trees, engaging in the fighting only when necessary and aiming directly for the horses the Legionnaires had seen while being dragged to the building they'd just escaped. Brasus selected and captured suitable mounts, then Ixillius and Chlodochar opened the gate and chased the rest of the herd out. The herd tore off wildly into the fighting, and the trio quickly raced off into the forest.

                                                                ***

        Alex was livid. Max had been fed sparingly and, although still sound, his legs showed multiple scrapes and bruises. He'd immediately threatened down at the boy – Lothar, his father had called him – and Alex had never been so happy to see the brute in an ill temper. The big horse had stomped and snorted out of the hut, throwing one last kick at the wall as she was leading him into the open. They were lucky that so far the fighting hadn't come this way, and would be able to leave without being noticed if they got away quickly.

        Max fought with her on the direction Lothar was leading them, breaking away and loping over to another hut nearby. Alex heard the kicks land in quick succession on the wall nearest Max, an angry whinny following. The walnut colored mare, Alex assumed, and Max refused to leave without her. Alex sighed and inched around the hut, looking for the door, while Lothar crouched down to nearly be invisible in the undergrowth at the edge of the forest.

        The sounds of fighting were clearer as Alex neared the side of the hut that must have the door, the only side she hadn't checked yet, and she was extremely cautious in scouting around the last edge. At least ten men were battling approximately four times the distance to the door away from where Alex stood. The familiar sounds of an unhappy horse snorting and pawing were almost as loud in Alex's ears as the clanging of bronze and steel. She couldn't tell if the door to this hut was locked, but the way Max was pacing the wall she knew he wasn't leaving without the mare inside, and Alex wasn't leaving without him. Alex darted to the door, foregoing caution for speed, and had her hand on the bar – thankfully unsecured – before any of the fighters noticed her. She threw the door wide and unleashed the mare.

        Alex hadn't really thought about what to expect from the mare, but the walnut colored blur that charged out with intent to murder wasn't it. The friendly mare Alex had befriended emerged at a battle-charge and aimed directly at the fighters running toward the hut. Hungry, abused, and extremely pissed off, the mare laid waste to two men before the rest realized she was the horse equivalent of berserk. Half of the men broke off and ran away, and the remaining three raised their swords to counterattack.

        Max, hearing the mare scream her rage outside the hut as she fought, burst past Alex and charged the fighters nearest to him. One man ran at being faced with two heavy horses, both apparently gone mad, the other two warriors disappeared quickly into the churned-up snow at the horses' hooves.

        Alex whistled quietly and Max obediently trotted over. He nickered back at the mare, which was still pounding the ground with her hooves. Alex noted the ironic reflection of her own relationship and sent Max to collect his lady friend, which he did in a manner that could only be described as brutish. But it worked. The mare was still angry – understandably, Alex agreed – but she was obediently taking the instinctive commands from Big Man, if only just barely.

        Lothar had been pissed about being forced to double up on Max now that they had two horses but, after witnessing the mare in action, Alex was fairly certain she'd only had one rider in the Legion for a reason. That same reason was also probably why the mare was shut up in a hut the same way that Max and Alex had been. Lothar's father had trusted her with his son, and she wasn't going to let the boy kill himself because of teenage pride.

        "Which way?" Alex finally asked once she felt they had enough distance from the village to talk.

        "Wide to the north, then nearly straight west so we can meet back up with Dario," Lothar answered, his tone matter of fact. Alex brought Max to a skidding halt. She stared over her shoulder at Lothar.

        "Meet up with who?" she asked, incredulous. The walnut mare slowed and looped back to where they had stopped, parking nose to nose with Max.

        "The Archer, Dario Quiros Ubina Torres," Lothar answered, his tone suddenly as unsure as the look on his face.

        Alex switched to her own languages and cursed a streak that would have made Verus proud. Lothar shrank back from her as much as he could and still stay mounted, recognizing most of her tirade from growing up with her gigno.

        "I am not mad at you," she said. "They must not know," she added, mostly to herself. Her thoughts raced, trying to get ahead of Ixillius and Brasus to figure out if there was any way she could warn them before they encountered the Auxiliaryman. She'd had a lot of time to think in the hut, and some of the conclusions she'd landed on from things she'd seen were suddenly not good ones.

        "They don't know what?" Lothar asked after a moment, almost timidly. Alex let her breath hiss out in a long sigh. The only way to get a warning to her men was to get there first, and she was farther away than they were. There was no way to win that race with Max in his current state, and a close second would just mean the same amount of dead.

        "Naevius owns Dario," she stated. By the choked-on gasp that Lothar uttered, he was familiar with the 'Naevius' name. "We need another way. To arrive at the back to where Dario is," she told him. Lothar was quiet for a moment, thinking.

"We need to go south. Circle the hill, come up on him from the southwest instead of coming from straight east," he reasoned. Alex turned Max and started in the new direction, the walnut mare beside them. They rode in silence for a long while.

"Are you certain Dario is Naevius's man?" Lothar asked, his tone pleading with her to be uncertain.

"He is in the right place too many times," Alex replied, her voice going flat. "But when Dario is on the Training Ground, Naevius has one sword. When Naevius is in the line for marching, he carries two swords. The last night I trained Dario, I saw the hilt of the sword he used, and the crest is Naevius's."

Lothar smoothly rattled off her gigno's favorite curse, half of it in Russian, and his arms tightened around her waist. Alex didn't bother trying to get any speed out of the tired horses. What she needed now was time to think of a way to get close enough to an Archer to kill him with a sword. She absently whistled for Hades as her mind worked, and then remembered that Lothar had the same training that she did at his age, if not more. Without a second thought, she engaged him in the planning.